L.A. PARKER: Time for reality check in the suburbs about gang activity

In Edward S. Herman’s “Beyond Hypocrisy,” the economist and political analyst said the world of doublespeak cultivates one’s “ability to lie, whether knowingly or unconsciously, and to get away with it; and the ability to use lies and choose and shape facts selectively, blocking out those that don’t fit an agenda or program.”

Those words surfaced Wednesday after Trentonian reporter Megan Goldschmidt published an article regarding a Mercer County application that gained Hamilton Township a Mercer County Justice Assistance windfall.

Hamilton used a $19,317 grant to purchase an undercover vehicle to fight gang entrepreneurs and graffiti artists.

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If Hamilton Twp. officials sought confusion, then they delivered in fantastic fashion as any reader felt death-defyingly dizzy by the time they reached the article’s final quotation marks.

The grant application accurately described a steady deterioration of Trenton, plus, concluded that gang activity has increased in both Hamilton and Ewing.

Business Administrator John Ricci said police would not notify or discuss investigations about gang-related incidents with Mayor Yaede.

If Ricci is accurate, then Yaede’s comment about drive-by shootings should be discounted. Police would not have discussed these incidents with her.

Imagine if Ricci spoke honestly. His assertion would mean that police officials do not have discussions with Yaede about a proliferation of gangs, that is, if such an anti-social group existed in a place named as No. 75 on a most livable cities in America list.

No one can definitively say that Hamilton officials consciously distort, deny and discount, but it’s not a great leap to imagine that gang activity has trickled from Trenton into Hamilton; or for that matter, from Trenton to Lawrence or any other municipality that shares this capital city’s borders.

The grant application presents Trenton as a place where neighborhoods have become “open air drug markets” with residents from the suburbs and neighboring Pennsylvania visiting (the city) for the sole purpose of buying drugs.

If gangs sell drugs and people from the suburbs buy those drugs from gangs, then Hamilton, Lawrence and Ewing have a gang problem.

Government officials in all suburbs that connect to Trenton should face the fact that gang members live in their neighborhoods, especially when one considers that these groups are about making money.